Notes on Grounds

An investigation into modes of artistic and political production in contemporary Europe, through an investigation of work being produced in the locus of East and West twenty years after the Mauerfall in Berlin. Using Berlin as a prism, a series of texts and artworks by some of Europe’s finest practitioners are presented in a unique book-object that works through its own layout and design as a physical exhibition.

Callanan is intrigued by systems present in society that shape our lives yet remain largely unobserved. In a process of research he makes simple and direct requests to international organisations and authorities, including open data sources. Through collating and presenting the often excessive results his work becomes an all inclusive, all embracing reflection of our wider world. In Departure of All Callanan will be showing Wars During My Lifetime, Grounds and a new work titled Departure of All.

Departure of All is a flight departure board displaying flight information for every departure happening from all international airports around the world. The familiar wait in front of the departure board is replaced with an accelerated stream of flight departure times, given poignancy by the fact they are real flights that can be mapped to real places in real time. The world as one airport.

In Grounds, a work of long term research started in 2003, Callanan seeks to negotiate permission to take a single photograph in buildings important to society but where photography is not permitted. His ongoing photographic archive currently contains about 2000 locations from across the world, a selection of which are on show.

Wars During My Lifetime is a newspaper, listing every war fought during the course of the artist’s life. It is an evolving work first published in 2012, a third edition is published on the occasion of this exhibition.

Or Gallery is pleased to present Along Some Sympathetic Lines, an exhibition of artwork by London-based artist Martin John Callanan, and an archive project by curator Liz Bruchet. The exhibition considers the poetic possibilities of data and its documentation, and the tenuous process of making meaning.

Martin John Callanan is an artist researching an individual’s place within systems. Callanan generates and reworks photographs, letters and electronic data into evidence of exchanges – between the individual, the institution and the networks of power that intertwine them. The exhibition presents four of the artist’s series: The Fundamental Units, the result of amassing millions of pixels of data, to photographs, in microscopic detail far beyond the capacity of the human eye, the lowest monetary unit of each of the 166 active currencies of world, only to enlarge and print them to vast scale; Wars During My Lifetime, an evolving newspaper listing of every war fought during the course of the artist’s life; Grounds, an ongoing photographic archive which charts ‘important places’ in the world where security restrictions limit the image to the carpeted, tiled or concrete floors; and Letters 2004-2006, Callanan’s correspondence with various heads of states and religious leaders which implicate them in conversations that question their very rationale of their authority. These acts of excavating, accumulating and visualising data draw out the sympathetic aspects within documentation and in so doing, mark and disrupt the underlying power dynamics.

A second gallery features an archive project by London-based curator Liz Bruchet. The display of ephemera from the personal archive of the curator’s grandfather, a Canadian insurance salesman and aspiring radio presenter, takes its inspiration from a found audio recording – part monologue, part autobiography, and part radio show – made in 1974. Harnessing the impulses of the collector, archivist and biographer, the curator reasserts her role as custodian and caretaker to nurture narratives and give weight to the subjective remnants of one man’s life.

This exhibition is curated by Liz Bruchet.

The exhibition is possible with the generous support of Or Gallery, the National Physical Laboratory, and UCL European Institute.

With thanks to Galeria Horrach Moya, (Hiper)vincles, Whitechapel Gallery, Book Works, David Karl, and Pau Waelder.

art.es is a 100 % bilingual magazine (English/Spanish) with contributions from the world over, and aimed at the entire world of genuinely contemporary art.

art.es focuses on established art as well as the latest creative iniciatives emerging from every corner of the planet. It informs and reflects on topics of interest, but with a fresh language and crisp design which are comprehensible to both specialists and amateurs. It has over 90 specialized collaborators and correspondents covering each and every geographical and thematic area of the contemporary art world.

In August 2009, a strange apparition lands in the wilderness of Skulpturenpark. Faithfull’s Mobile Research Station No.] is a curious hybrid- half hi-tech Antarctic Research Station/half rusty-broken-dumpster. Using a standard trash container as its basis, the station nevertheless forms a luxurious designer-pod providing for an eccentric set of researchers. Rather than exploring the frozen wastes of Antarctica or the moons of Saturn. the limited artists/researchers undertake their investigation in the surrounding no man’s land and urban zones of uncertain that still lie at the center of Berlin.

A solo exhibition across six spaces at Casal Solleric, the city of Palma’s contemporary art gallery and archive, including two new works.

Ten years in the making, and shown here for the fist time, Grounds, an archive of thousands of photographs of the ground in locations important to society. A set of 200 displayed across three slide projectors.

Wars During My Life Time, a new work for this exhibition, a newspaper listing – in Catalan – all wars fought during my lifetime.

I Wanted to See All of the News From Today, amasses from across the internet, the front pages of over 960 newspapers from around the world and displays these images within the space of a single scrolling display.

Text Trends, an animation which takes the content generated by search queries and reduces this process to its essential elements: search terms vs. frequency searched for over time, presented in the form of a line graph.

From interrogating Nicolas Bourriaud’s ideas of a new age of the altermodern to the daily life of a political actitivist in the World Bank-backed last dictatorship in Europe -Belarus, You Are Here goes a way to offering a sort of field book for contemporary Europe. A continent where young artists and activists blend forms and travel in their work, living in one country while all the while subtly interrogating their home countries’ traditions and expectations. A generation has come of age in a post- Wall Europe who no longer feel obligated to answer the national questions, but instead answer to their unique personal experience, one of borderless work and travel, mediated by translation and the Internet. Such instances of artistic, intellectual and activist projects are given space in You Are Here, offering the chance to see whether such young practitioners really are writing from a freedom and plurality born in 1989 back into a new, wider and pan-European tradition in 2009.

ASDF’sFor a Brief Time Only… is a purchasable exhibition of 24 artists available at a photo developer near you. You can find it at any store that allows file uploading via the internet (including most major US drug-stores). The image files will be sent to the closest location near you, and within minutes you will be able to walk in and pick them up as prints.

This exhibition contains 24 small 4×6 photographic prints contained within the packaging provided by each store. Also included are a contact sheet with all the artists’ information, and a letter to the store employee reassuring that there is nothing wrong with the order.

No money is being made by ASDF in this exhibition. You will purchase the show directly from the store (unless you can acquire it another way), which will probably cost around $5. So far this show is available throughout the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. If you live elsewhere, and know of a store that meets the necessary requirements, please email ASDF and we will send the show near you.

The show is on view from November 6 to December 4 2008.

For instructions on how to view the show at a location near you, please visit: